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Indispensible: Unmanned drones like this MQ-1 Predator are vital to President Obama’s War on Terror, offing top terrorists across the globe. Photo: AP

Indispensible: Unmanned drones like this MQ-1 Predator are vital to President Obama’s War on Terror, offing top terrorists across the globe. (AP)

The inexhaustible America-haters on our domestic left are absolutely correct that drones — unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — are morally ambiguous weapons. All weapons of war are morally ambiguous, as are even “just wars” waged for purely defensive purposes. All wars violate a universal commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

But in this imperfect world, we sometimes must kill if we are to survive. In developed societies (such as our own) that strive toward moral behavior, killing enemies in a conflict is regulated by laws, conventions and ethics. At times, as in the city bombings of World War II, we cast our strictures aside in a desperate hour. But we really do our best to spare the innocent.

Warfare is imprecise, though, shaped by confusion and emotion as much as by plans. It’s unlikely that humans will ever eliminate war or find a way to wage it so “cleanly” that every noncombatant will be safe.

But — contrary to the reflexive claims of the left — UAVs mark a significant advance in sparing the innocent: morally ambiguous still, but less so than an artillery shell or a cruise missile.

Never before has a state been able to target its deadly enemies with such precision. And contrary to one of the countless myths of the left, we’re not trigger-happy. Under rules adopted in the Bush years and broadly retained now, targets must be screened and approved at multiple levels in a process so rigorous that, frequently, our enemies escape. It’s hard to see how we could fight more ethically.

Instead of bombing a city or invading yet another country where terrorists have found refuge, pinpoint strikes kill terrorist chieftains and their immediate adherents (or, at worst, their willing hosts) while sparing the family next door. But our critics, foreign and domestic, hold us to an impossible standard, questioning whether we have the right to kill enemies proud of their resolve to murder us. Those same critics revel in the rare drone strikes that go awry as evidence of our alleged savagery.

But there will always be mistakes in war, because war is waged by human beings, even if they command brilliant machines (which themselves may err). What should be deemed remarkable is how few innocents have become casualties in proportion to the number of confirmed terrorists eliminated. That ratio is without precedent in warfare.

What should trouble all of us — especially those of genuine conscience on the left — is the hard left’s willful blindness to the atrocities of the terrorists we hunt.

Yet leftists romanticize America’s enemies, excusing their sins while exaggerating our missteps. And when other accusations fall short, they trot out the N-word of security affairs, “assassination,” equating terrorist chieftains with JFK.

The hard left’s position is ultimately simple: America is bad, our troops are monsters and attacks on our known enemies are criminal. And drones are hateful because they not only make our military more effective, but also because they spare the innocent: For leftists, it’s better if we kill more civilians, since that reinforces their dogma.

It’s also interesting that, while the left personalized every action of President George W. Bush, President Obama largely gets a pass, as if he’s being duped by bloodthirsty generals. But Obama has learned to stop worrying and love that drone: For him, UAVs are effective, politically convenient, diplomatically defensible and (given the cost of ground interventions) cheap.

Yes, there are moral questions. There always will be in warfare. Practical issues arise, as well, such as the limits of sovereignty in a world of porous borders. And, yes, there are legal and ethical matters that remain unresolved.

But there’s one more point that the left and its fellow travelers in the commentariat get wrong: their claim that drone strikes only create more terrorists.

Well, no. Drone attacks deprive terror organizations of experienced leaders and fanatical executors. And a village kid mad that his goat ran away from the blast doesn’t automatically turn into a suicide bomber.

Do drone strikes excite anger? You bet: not least, among the terrorists and their supporters (including sympathizers here at home). For the rest of us, terrorists slain by UAVs mean soldiers and Marines come home alive — and a safer world.

Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst and a retired US Army officer.